Brazil or Bust/ 25th Birthday Party

Event Info

Host:	Maya Marshall
Type:	Birthday Party/Benefit

Time and Place

Start Time:	Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 7:00pm
End Time:	Sunday, January 25, 2009 at 3:00am
Location:	Poitin Stil
Street:	1502 W Jarvis
City/Town:	Chicago, IL

Here's the skinny: DJ PERV spins from 7-10 & intermittently raffles off prizes; Bachelor Auction from 10-10:30; Karaoke from 11-2am; Pool Tournament begins at 7; Dart Tournament begins at 8; Euchre Tournament begins at 9. Buy into it! Come on out.

The Cause: Send Maya to Brazil for 6 months to teach English and serve the Elderly.

I'm preparing for my mid-twenties identity crisis, and I'd like for you to come dance with me. Play pool with me. Be my Euchre partner. Beat me in Darts. Sing Karaoke, win a basket with wine and cheese in it or an hour long massage. Win lunch or a free cut and color by a lovely licensed cosmotologist. Win one of several other prizes. Come have a beer and talk to some folks you haven't seen in a while.

Green Mill

So I'm getting over my fear of reading on stage. As part of this initiative I went to the Green Mill and read a poem I wrote. It received a good response. Here's the poem I read:

She and I are the daughters of top tier abstractions.
I swallow haloed theories of difference. She plucks
strums, fingers nerves like cello strings vying decency
to escape all things traditional. We're glorified young
women free to drink and tromp along glistening Chicago concrete,
gnash teeth at lascivious old men, use our bodies to free our minds.

With a smoke full mouth this semi-Sappho speaks her mind
into sound symbols--syllables meant to concretize abstractions.
She holds my elbow, sure that this way only her feet will hit the concrete.
"I had a baby once, well twice," she admits. She had them plucked
in time to stop their first breathes. She claimed she'd saved her young
fellow the trouble of trying to care. "It's not about decency,

just time and space." I listen: sirens, jingling spokes, "decency."
On the corner a wrinkled woman squats to piss. I wonder what mind
could think this? The young
in the wilderness are in the wilderness everywhere. Flesh is not abstract,
morals aside. Listen. See Sappho push flesh from flesh, too concrete
a liminal breakage. In the alley by my back gate, a little boy is plucking

the face of an action figure. Index nail to plastic. thump. pluck,
pluck. thump. The sound is eighth notes. "Decency"
is not his concept. His is a night of simple destruction: crush plastic into concrete
walk, resume--thump,pluck,pluck. There is no one around to mind.
This little one is alone in an alley at 1 or 2 or 3 am. Abstractly,
I begin to flick the gate--pling, pling, pling--my focus entirely on the young

boy just steps ahead of me. Sappho speaks, "Aren't you too young
to be out here alone?' No response, just--thump. pluck, pluck.
"Are you lost?" His eyes are grey, milky, He looks up abstractly.
"Doesn't your mom want you in bed at a decent
hour?" He turned to leave calling out, "she ain't here, so she don't mind."
She turns her smile on me, laughs, shrugs. I pull the gate, iron scrapes concrete.

He could be my nightmares made concrete,
The epitome of all things frightening about the young.
Too much to hold on to. Too much to keep in mind.
Sappho says, "grab me another drink. Let me finger then pluck
som music out of you." She's on my nerves, but I concede. Decency
degenerates into ambiguity. Whiskey and want cause abstracton.

Tonight I'll make a mistake characteristic of the young.
It would be indecent to deny an artist the chance to pluck
song into creation, to concretize the lush lust, eliminate the abstraction.